Human brains nonetheless react to chimp voices, hinting at a deep evolutionary hyperlink in how we acknowledge sound.
The human mind isn’t restricted to recognizing speech from different folks. Researchers on the College of Geneva (UNIGE) have discovered that particular elements of the auditory cortex react strongly to the vocalizations of chimpanzees. These primates are our closest family each in evolutionary phrases and within the acoustic qualities of their calls. The examine, printed within the journal eLife, factors to the presence of specialised subregions within the human mind which can be significantly conscious of the sounds made by sure primate species.
This discovery offers new insight into how voice recognition originated and may help explain how language later developed.
Searching for the Evolutionary Roots of Vocal Communication
The human voice plays a crucial role in social interaction, and a large portion of the auditory cortex is devoted to processing it. Scientists have long wondered whether this ability emerged only recently or whether it has much deeper evolutionary origins. To explore this question, researchers from UNIGE’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences examined vocal communication through an evolutionary lens.
By comparing how the human brain processes vocalizations from closely related species, including chimpanzees, bonobos, and macaques, scientists can identify which neural traits humans share with other primates and which are unique. This approach helps reveal how the neural foundations of vocal communication began to form well before spoken language appeared.
Visualizing Vocalizations in the Brain
To carry out the study, the UNIGE research team asked 23 human volunteers to listen to vocal sounds from four different species. Human voices were included as a control. Chimpanzee vocalizations were chosen because of their close genetic and acoustic similarity to humans. Bonobo sounds were also tested, despite their vocalizations being more similar to birdsong. Macaque calls were included as well, since macaques are more distantly related to humans both genetically and acoustically. Brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), allowing researchers to observe how the auditory cortex responded.
“Our intention was to verify whether a subregion sensitive specifically to primate vocalizations existed,” explains Leonardo Ceravolo, research associate at UNIGE’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and first author of the study.
A Distinct Response to Chimpanzee Calls
The brain scans revealed exactly what the researchers were looking for. A part of the auditory cortex called the superior temporal gyrus, which is involved in processing sounds related to language, music, and emotional expression, became active in response to certain primate vocalizations. “When participants heard chimpanzee vocalizations, this response was clearly distinct from that triggered by bonobos or macaques.”
What makes this finding especially striking is the comparison with bonobos. Although bonobos are just as genetically close to humans as chimpanzees, their vocal sounds differ greatly in structure. The results suggest that it is not genetic relatedness alone that shapes the brain’s response, but a combination of evolutionary closeness and acoustic similarity.
What This Means for the Evolution of Language
These findings open new possibilities for understanding how communication systems evolved in the brain. They suggest that some regions of the human auditory cortex may have retained sensitivity to the calls of closely related primates over millions of years.
“We already knew that certain areas of the animal brain reacted specifically to the voices of their fellow creatures. But here, we show that a region of the adult human brain, the anterior superior temporal gyrus, is also sensitive to non-human vocalizations,” says Leonardo Ceravolo.
The results support the idea that humans and great apes share core vocal processing abilities that existed before the emergence of spoken language. They may also help researchers better understand how voice recognition develops early in life. For example, this research could offer clues as to how infants are able to recognize familiar voices, even while still in utero.
Reference: “Sensitivity of the human temporal voice areas to nonhuman primate vocalizations” by Leonardo Ceravolo, Coralie Debracque, Thibaud Gruber and Didier Grandjean, 25 November 2025, eLife.
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.108795.1
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